Along with the volume A lecher from Gorgani (Publishing house letter, Bucharest, 2023), announced as a sequel to the 2021 book, Doina Ruști offers a return to Bucharest from the 18th century. Bucharest is miserable and dusty and marked by the worst of Phanariot rule, from corruption to insecurity, whether political or personal. Eternal Bucharest, marked by the fear of a new epidemic of the plague, which meant closing the doors of houses and inns for a time, and the cessation of all traces of public life.

Maybe that’s why, maybe because they didn’t know what tomorrow awaited them – very often they die suspiciously, mysteriously, unexpectedly in 52 stories, which are just as many oddities, rewritten and intelligently, and with humor, and with illumination. author’s consciousness and, first of all, in the spirit of our era of storytellers – most of the heroes in A lecher from Gorgani they live under the sign and the spirit immeasurably. Exaggeration. First of all, in love, sex and all the pleasures of life. But also in thievery, theft, fraud, desire for conquest…

It is no further than the character of the first story, the story that gave the book its title, a man who came from nowhere, just like the hero prince Eugene Barbu, described to us as a species lover’s car. And since there are many applications from different women of different social status, they even made a waiting list. It was also signed by a woman named Eleni. And when, finally, it was her turn, when she was called to the place where he was supposed to be based the patron of pleasures, Eleni “took an older carriage and knocked on the gate with a cane.” No, they were not needed Sesame, open!, the gate opened. The servant brought Elena to the salon, “where many candles were burning” (a bad sign!), where there was only a couch and that without pillows, and she waited for an hour. I don’t know if it is measured by a pewter watch, like many heroes in the book. At the end of the specified hour, the servant informed Elena that the meeting was cancelled. The man who gave pleasure unexpectedly left the other world, but as a reward Elena received a book. “The book, wrapped in silk, was like a golden box. Eleni examined her stunned and full of small humiliations. The book contained 17 rules by which the Prodigal lived. And according to the 17 rules, in so many chapters the answer is given to the stories about which Doina Rusty learned more by reading old manuscripts, books, princes, legal and church orders.

The novelist does not borrow, does not wish to consciously transfer from the old vocabulary. Vice versa. Very often it gives way to words characteristic of the oral speech of our century. Since our days. It happens because there are enough men, most of them are beautiful, some are cynical, others are sadistic, others are cruel because they are such artists, a large part of them are lecherous, but with a vein, one innovator in the confectionery business (if you read Tree nut you will learn quite a lot about an ancestor narcissus of modern times), some are able to fight with swords even with professional soldiers, others are innovative in fashion and killed by women who seek to turn them into dresses, pants, called boys. Some of them wear luxurious clothes, the cost of which is compared to the price of modern expensive mobile phones. Some were punished, even sentenced to death by the ruler Constantin Brankovianu, because they are suspected and even proven to have plotted against him, others receive slightly lesser sentences from Mr. Alexandru Moruzi. A certain Yashka is punished by being branded with a red-hot iron, and this is how we find the origin of the verb to accept this is how it was used in the Stalinist period. And not only.

From this it should not be understood that Doina Ruști would belong to the category of aggressive feminists. So that he could speak only good things about women. In no case. It is full of women, tricks, and sinners in many of the 52 stories in the book. A lot is sold and bought, full of merchants among the heroes of Doina Rushti. Merchants of both sexes. Some sell only old clothes, others sell sheets, jewelry, some sell, as I said, tin clocks, other culinary delicacies. Or a dog of such color, which is not like others. Hence his strange story, Why strange, find out after reading the story The color of the dog.

Old words from the vocabulary of the 18th century have not been completely banished. They appear when it comes to crafts, customs, objects of a certain period. They appear very often in the headlines. Teleleica, Zarnacadeau, Staico Marghiolul, Maglistul, Calemgiul and buildingRead the whole article and comment on Contributors.ro